


The Good Queen

by crossingwinter



Series: Rhaella Series [1]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Angst, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-09
Updated: 2013-06-09
Packaged: 2017-12-14 10:34:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/835954
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crossingwinter/pseuds/crossingwinter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>On the eve of their son’s wedding, he comes to her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Good Queen

He came to her as he had not come in years—head bowed and scissors in hand.

“Your Grace?”

He sat on her bed—when had he last been in this room?  Not since before Viserys, certainly.  His eyes were a heavy, deep dark, not the vividly violet manic she was so used to seeing.  You could tell so much from looking at his eyes, and Rhaella (and she suspected Jon Darry as well) was sure that she could predict his madness just by seeing his eyes.  Today, for a moment, he was Aerys.

“Will you?” he gestured at her with the scissors.  His hands were thin, his wrists scarred from the throne, his nails over long and brittle and covered in dirt and grime.  They trembled.

She glanced at her handmaidens.  The Santagar girl looked frightened and the Westerling…well…it didn’t surprise her to see nothing in the Westerling girl’s face.  She nodded at them, and they scurried away.

Rhaella stood and crossed to the bed, taking his hands and the scissors. 

She started with his left thumb nail.  It came away from the thumb easily, inches cut away in a moment.  She felt Aerys flinch next to her, as he had whenever their cousin Steffon had made to strike him in the practice yards.

“There, there.  It doesn’t hurt now, does it?”

“It looks like it should.”  His voice was quiet.  It sounded dry, thirsty.  Rhaella had half a mind to call for water, but knew better.  Aerys wasn’t the Mad King in this moment.  He was her brother, timid and gentle.  But if he feared poison, those dark deep eyes would shallow and lighten and he would disappear again.  She began his index finger.

“Just nail.  No skin.  No pain or blood.  Shedding what should be gone and leaving health and growth.”

He let out a quiet huff.  “You speak to me like I’m a child.”

She cut the nail of his middle finger.  “Forgive me, Your Grance.  I spend too much time with our son.”

“Rhaegar needs no coddling.”

“You are correct.  He certainly does not.  He is a man now, and wed on the morrow.” Rhaegar had never needed coddling, always cool of head.  Even when he was a small child, he had always been one for books and songs.  “But I was speaking of Viserys.”

“Oh.”

She cut the nail from his ring finger, with its great ruby signet.

“He is two now?”

“Three.”

“Three…” he breathed, as if the number astonished him.  “Three’s a good age.”

“It’s terrible,” she found herself blurting out as she snipped the last nail from his hand, and reached for his right.

“Oh?”  He sounded genuinely surprised.

“He talks non-stop and causes trouble in the kitchens.  He pretends he’s Rhaegar at a tourney, running around with long sticks that are more likely to hurt him than others.”

“The blood of the Dragon.”  Aerys sounded fond.  “I wish I could see more of him.”

Rhaella looked at him sideways as she snipped the right index nail.  He was tired. She could see it in the way his shoulders slumped forward, in the way his head hung, in the way his skin seemed loose on his bones.  When they had been young and he had slouched like that, their mother would run her fingers up his spine until it was straight again.  He had hated it.

She said not a word.  She would not lie to him, and she had no desire that he spend more time with Viserys than he did.  Rhaegar would make a better father than Aerys.

“When I am…” he swiveled his head from side to side, avoiding her eyes, but knowing that she knew what he meant, while she cut the nail from his middle finger, “I don’t want to see him.  And when I’m…like I am now, I feel I shouldn’t.  I don’t…I don’t want him to love me.”

 _He won’t_ , she thought.  _I won’t let him._

He was shaking, and she saw tears dribbling down his cheeks.

“What kind of pathetic creature I am?  I do not want my sons to love me.  I drive them from me with all I have.  I drive my only family from me.  I drove you from me long ago.”

She held his hand firmly and clipped off the nail of his right ring finger. 

“You have not driven me from you, Your Grace.”

It did not stop his tears, though he laughed wetly.  “I drove you from me the moment you started calling me Y _our Grace_ , Rhaella.  I have seen no wives speak to their husbands thusly.  Not Alerie Tyrell, not Jeyne Castamere, not Joanna Lannister—”

“Their husbands are not kings.”  She tried to keep her voice light, gentle, and she finished his right hand, shaking the clippings of his nails onto the bedspread.  They looked like shorn talons on the red wool, some sort of prize for a bloody war.

“Why not _brother_ , though?  You are my sister.  Why do you not call me _brother_?”

She did not reply, still staring at the nails on her bed.  Then, she turned to him.  “Shall I cut your hair, brother?”

“My hair?”

“You will want to look your finest for the Seven and the Martells tomorrow.  Let me trim away some of the knots.”

The violet eyes were unsteady as they locked onto hers.  Brighter than they had been before, tear-filled still, though the tears were no longer falling.

“I…suppose…” he sounded hesitant, but when she smiled at his response, he dared a smile as well.

She stood, took his hands and led him to her table.  She took her brush and began to gently push it through his hair, as she had with Viserys earlier that night.

“And my beard as well?” he asked her.

“Of course, brother.”

“You are saying that to please me.”

“I enjoy pleasing you.”  _More than I could ever enjoy pleasing the King._   This Aerys was the same Aerys as the forgotten prince.  The one before she had married him, bitterness and denial in her heart.

“Do you?” he was watching her in the mirror.

“You are my sweet brother.  We played in the meadow at Summerhall, we tracked mud into Maegor’s Holdfast after the spring rain, we—”

“Poured wine down Tytos Lannister’s boots at a feast.  Do you remember that?”  His face was alight, but not the way she so oft saw it of late.  Sunlight, not wildfire.  How bright her brother could be. 

“How could I forget?” she cut gently at his hair, inches of matted mess falling to the floor.  “He thought he had done it to himself.”

Aerys chuckled, and Rhaella continued to cut away.

“Will the Martell girl make him happy, do you think?”  The eyes in the mirror were distant.

“The Lannister girl would have made him happier,” she sighed, “but Elia is a sweet thing.  Quiet.  Too much like Rhaegar in truth.  But I think they will make fine companions for one another.”

“The Lannister girl?”

“Tywin Lannister would have made the Kingdoms the most peaceful place on this earth for his grandson to rule.  And Cersei is vibrant.  She would have brought life to Rhaegar.”

Aerys grimaced.  “They have no blood of the Dragon.”

“No.  They do not.”

“You think that is not a good enough reason?” Aerys’ voice was stronger now.  More plaintive.  Those eyes were guarded, and Rhaella took a step back from him.

Gently, she said, “Turn around, brother, that I might trim your beard.”

He twisted on her chair, and the full force of his expression bore down upon her.

“Tywin Lannister thinks too much of himself.  I did the right thing.  No one should presume too much of his king.”

Rhaella said not a word, though she agreed.

She cleared the beard away from his lips—such full lips, Aerys had, had always had.  Lips like Rhaegar’s.  Her lips were thin, like Viserys’, and she always wondered where they had came from.  Which was of the Dragon, and which was not.  Or perhaps both were.  Or neither.

“Elia Martell was a good choice, brother.”

That seemed to appease him, and he settled down slightly.

“I think—”

“I think you should keep your mouth still.  It is hard to trim a beard when it keeps moving.”

He chuckled.  “Will you sing to me then? You used to sing to me.  When I was younger.”

“When you were but a lad.  My voice is—”

“I hear it in my dreams sometimes.  When I am falling asleep, it soothes me.”

She looked up at him, surprised.  There were kind crinkles at the corners of his eyes.

“What would you have me sing?”

“ _Alysanne_ was always my favorite.”

And she sang—quietly, so as not to wake Viserys in the next room. 

_So high to fly, so far to fall,_

_She took him by the hand,_

_And oh, she rivaled sun and stars,_

_The Good Queen Alysanne_

She didn’t remember all the words.  They had fallen away at some point—after Summerhall and Rhaegar.  It reminded her too much of her mother, and she felt her throat closing with tears as she sang.  What would her mother think of Aerys now, the golden child she had loved so much, lost to madness, and dreams of fire and blood?

“There you are, brother.”

He turned and examined himself in the mirror, and she brushed through his hair once again, to make sure that it was smooth.

“I wish…”

“Yes?”

“I wish I could always look like this.”

Deep pools, they were, of purple darkness, fear and sadness so like her own at times.

“So do I.” 

**Author's Note:**

> (Yes, I made up the lyrics to Alysanne. I looked for them in the series, but couldn't find them.)


End file.
